Electronic household appliance having a control system

ABSTRACT

An electronic household appliance has a control system which has a plurality of internal control units and a communication network between the plurality of internal control units. A selected internal control unit of the plurality of internal control units contains a controller and is additionally provided with a communication device which is configured for data communication with at least one external administrative unit without intermediate storage of the data to be communicated. The controller of the selected internal control unit is also configured to control data communication between the at least one external administrative unit and the plurality of internal control units of the control system via the communication device.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation, under 35 U.S.C. § 120, of copendinginternational application No. PCT/EP2019/083029, filed Nov. 29, 2019,which designated the United States; this application also claims thepriority, under 35 U.S.C. § 119, of German patent application No. DE 102018 009 944.0, filed Dec. 18, 2018; the prior applications are herewithincorporated by reference in their entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to an electronic household appliancehaving a control system which has a plurality of internal control unitsand a communication network between the plurality of internal controlunits.

Electronic household appliances are being networked more and morefrequently to other household appliances, an intelligent home controlleror the Internet. This networking makes it possible to transmit softwareupdates to the control units of the household appliances or toexternally provide usage data from the household appliances, forexample.

European patent EP 2 704 007 B1 discloses a household appliance having aplurality of control units which can be updated and are connected via aninternal bus. The household appliance is additionally equipped, for thepurpose of securely updating the firmware of the control units, with anintelligent communication module which has a non-volatile memory forbuffering program update data and can retrieve the program update datafrom an external communication partner outside the household appliance.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The object of the invention is to provide an electronic householdappliance having an improved control system with a simple structure.

This object is achieved by means of an electronic household appliancehaving the features of the independent claim. The dependent claimsrelate to particularly advantageous configurations and developments ofthe invention.

The electronic household appliance of the invention contains a controlsystem which has a plurality of internal control units and acommunication network between the plurality of internal control units.According to the invention, it is proposed to additionally provide aselected internal control unit of the plurality of internal controlunits, which contains a controller, with a communication device which isconfigured for data communication with at least one externaladministrative unit without buffering the data to be communicated. Thecontroller of the selected internal control unit is also configured,according to the invention, to control data communication between the atleast one external administrative unit and the plurality of internalcontrol units of the control system via the communication device.

Since the additional communication device need not buffer the data to becommunicated and the data communication between the at least oneexternal administrative unit and the plurality of internal control unitsof the control system is controlled via this communication device by thecontroller of the selected internal control unit, it is possible to usea simple and cost-effective communication device which can be integratedin or connected to an existing internal control unit of the householdappliance. The communication device used according to the invention isnot, in particular, an independent communication module having its ownnon-volatile memory and its own data communication controller. Instead,the computing capacities which are available anyway and possibly alsostorage capacities of the selected internal control unit are used.Non-volatile buffering of the data to be communicated in thecommunication device is neither possible nor intended according to theinvention.

In this context, the terms “internal” and “external” relate to thehousehold appliance. That is to say, the plurality of internal controlunits are parts of the control system in or on the household appliance,whereas the external administrative units are separate componentsoutside the control system and outside the household appliance.

The data to be communicated via the communication device include, inparticular, control program data and firmware updates for the internalcontrol units and usage data from the internal control units. In thiscontext, it is also possible to set up tunnels to the internal controlunits. Data streaming to or from internal control units is alsoconceivable if, for example, camera modules or video displays areprovided on the household appliance.

The external administrative units include, in particular, the Internet,cloud servers, central home controllers, service computers, smartphones,memory cards, memory sticks and the like. Depending on their embodiment,the external administrative units may communicate with the communicationdevice in a wireless or wired manner or can be directly connected to thecommunication device.

The communication network between the plurality of internal controlunits of the control system may have any desired configuration, inprinciple. It preferably contains a bus system, a daisy chain, aplurality of individual communication connections in a star structure, aplurality of communication connections in a tree structure orcombinations of the above-mentioned possibilities. The communicationnetwork may also be entirely or partially wired or wireless.

The controller of the selected internal control unit is a CPU or amicrocontroller, for example. The selected internal control unitpreferably also has a memory, preferably a non-volatile memory, which isconnected to the controller. The other internal control units of thecontrol system preferably, but need not necessarily, each likewise havea controller and possibly also a memory.

The electronic household appliance is, for example, a hob, a cooker, anextractor hood, a dishwasher, a laundry treatment appliance (for examplewashing machine, tumble dryer), a refrigeration appliance (for examplefridge, freezer), an air-conditioning appliance or the like. Theinternal control units of such an electronic household appliance areused, for example, to control the various units of the householdappliance, for example pumps, heating systems, cooling apparatuses,fans, etc., or are used as an operating apparatus or as a centralcontroller of the household appliance.

In one configuration of the invention, the communication device has acommunication module having at least one module interface for datacommunication with the at least one external administrative unit and aconnection interface for data communication with the controller of theselected internal control unit. This communication module preferably hasat least one module interface for the wired (e.g. Ethernet) or wirelesscommunication connection to an external administrative unit (e.g. byradio, Bluetooth, etc.) and/or at least one module interface for thedirect connection to an external administrative unit (e.g. USB, memorycard slot, etc.).

Alternatively or additionally, the communication device may have atleast one control interface for directly connecting the controller ofthe selected internal control unit to an external administrative unit.

An operating apparatus having an input device and/or a display devicefor a user of the household appliance is preferably selected for theselected internal control unit. The control unit having the greatestcomputing power is preferably selected.

In this case, the controller of the selected internal control unit isconfigured to control the input device and/or the display device forexchanging information relating to data communication via thecommunication device. The exchange of information preferably comprisesdisplaying information relating to possible data communication (e.g.available software updates) and current data communication (e.g. statusof the current data communication) to a user of the household appliancevia the display device and/or inputting control commands relating todata communication (e.g. start available software updates, requestavailable software updates, etc.) by a user of the household appliancevia the display device.

The communication module can preferably contain a CPU and a non-volatilememory for internally controlling communication. The CPU andnon-volatile memory are not used by the communication device to storethe data from an external communication unit.

Other features which are considered as characteristic for the inventionare set forth in the appended claims.

Although the invention is illustrated and described herein as embodiedin an electronic household appliance having a control system, it isnevertheless not intended to be limited to the details shown, sincevarious modifications and structural changes may be made therein withoutdeparting from the spirit of the invention and within the scope andrange of equivalents of the claims.

The construction and method of operation of the invention, however,together with additional objects and advantages thereof will be bestunderstood from the following description of specific embodiments whenread in connection with the accompanying drawings.

The above and further features and advantages of the invention becomebetter comprehensible from the following description of preferred,non-restrictive exemplary embodiments on the basis of the accompanyingdrawing.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWING

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a structure of a control system for ahousehold appliance according to a first exemplary embodiment of theinvention;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the structure of the control system for thehousehold appliance according to a second exemplary embodiment of theinvention; and

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the structure of the control system for thehousehold appliance according to a third exemplary embodiment of theinvention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to the figures of the drawings in detail and first,particularly to FIG. 1 thereof, there is shown a first embodiment of acontrol system 10 according to the invention for an electronic householdappliance.

The control system 10 contains a plurality of internal control units 12,14, one of which is used as a selected internal control unit 12, and theother internal control units are connected as submodules to thisselected internal control unit 12 via a communication network 16. In theembodiment of FIG. 1, the communication network 16 is a bus system andsome of the submodules 14 are connected in the form of a tree structure.The bus system 16 may be wired or wireless or may be partially wired andpartially wireless.

The selected internal control unit 12 contains, for example, a CPU as acontroller 18 and a non-volatile memory 22 connected to this controller18. The controller 18 has a network interface 20 for connection to thebus system 16.

The selected internal control unit 12 is, for example, an operatingapparatus of the household appliance that is equipped with an inputdevice 40 and a display device 42. The input device 40 and the displaydevice 42 are connected to the controller 18.

As illustrated in FIG. 1, the selected internal control unit 12 is alsoequipped with a communication device 24. The communication device 24 ispreferably integrated in or connected to the control unit 12. Theinternal control units 12, 14 of the control system 10 can carry outdata communication with external administrative units 26, 28 via thiscommunication device 24 in order to receive software updates or toprovide usage data, for example.

For this purpose, the communication device 24 has a simple communicationmodule 30 which has a module interface 32 for the wireless communicationconnection to an external administrative unit 26 (e.g. Internet, cloud,laptop with Bluetooth, etc.), a module interface 34 (e.g. USBconnection, memory card slot, etc.) for the direct connection to anexternal administrative unit 28 (e.g. USB stick, SD memory card, laptopwith USB cable, etc.) and a connection interface 36 (e.g. SDIO, SPI,I2C, UART, etc.) for connection to the controller 18. The communicationdevice 24 illustrated in FIG. 1 also has a control interface 38 (e.g.USB connection, memory card slot, etc.) for directly connecting thecontroller 18 to an external administrative unit 28 (e.g. USB stick, SDmemory card, laptop with USB cable, etc.). In other embodiment variantsof the invention, only some of these components 24, 38 of thecommunication device 24 or only some of the module interfaces 32, 34 ofthe communication module 24 are present.

The data communication between the internal control units 12, 14 and theexternal administrative units 26, 28 is controlled by the controller 18of the selected internal control unit 12. The data to be communicatedare not buffered in a non-volatile manner inside the communicationdevice 24 or in the memory 22 of the control unit 12. In the event of apower interruption during data communication via the communicationdevice 24, the data communication must be newly carried out. If there issufficient storage space, however, the data to be communicated canpossibly also be completely or partially buffered in a volatile mannerin the memory 22 of the control unit 12.

FIG. 2 shows a second embodiment of a control system according to theinvention for an electronic household appliance.

The control system 10 of FIG. 2 differs from the first embodiment ofFIG. 1 only in the configuration of the communication network 16. In theembodiment of FIG. 2, the communication network 16 is in the form of adaisy chain.

For the rest, the control system of FIG. 2 corresponds to that of thefirst embodiment, in which case some components of the selected internalcontrol unit 12 have been omitted in FIG. 2 for the sake of simplicity.

FIG. 3 shows a third embodiment of a control system according to theinvention for an electronic household appliance.

The control system 10 of FIG. 3 likewise differs from the firstembodiment of FIG. 1 only in the configuration of the communicationnetwork 16. In the embodiment of FIG. 3, the communication network 16 isin the form of a star.

For the rest, the control system of FIG. 3 corresponds to that of thefirst embodiment, in which case some components of the selected internalcontrol unit 12 have been omitted in FIG. 3 for the sake of simplicity.

The following is a summary list of reference numerals and thecorresponding structure used in the above description of the invention:

10 Control system12 Selected internal control unit14 Internal control units16 Communication network

18 Controller of 12

20 Network interface

22 Memory of 12

24 Communication device26 External administrative unit (wirelessly connected)28 External administrative unit (directly connected)30 Communication module32 Module interface for the wireless communication connection34 Module interface for the direct connection36 Connection interface38 Control interface for the direct connection40 Input device of 1242 Display device of 12

1. An electronic household appliance, comprising: a control systemhaving a plurality of internal controller systems and a communicationnetwork connected between said plurality of internal controller systems;said plurality of internal controller systems including a selectedinternal control system having a controller and a communication deviceconfigured for data communication with at least one externaladministrative unit without buffering data to be communicated; and saidcontroller of said selected internal control system is furtherconfigured to control data communication between the at least oneexternal administrative unit and said plurality of internal controllersystems of said control system via said communication device.
 2. Theelectronic household appliance according to claim 1, wherein saidcommunication device has a communication module with at least one moduleinterface for data communication with the at least one externaladministrative unit and a connection interface for data communicationwith said controller of said selected internal control system.
 3. Theelectronic household appliance according to claim 2, wherein saidcommunication module has said at least one module interface for awireless communication connection to the at least one externaladministrative unit.
 4. The electronic household appliance according toclaim 2, wherein said communication module has said at least one moduleinterface for a direct connection to the at least one externaladministrative unit.
 5. The electronic household appliance according toclaim 1, wherein said communication device has at least one controlinterface for directly connecting said controller of said selectedinternal control system to the at least one external administrativeunit.
 6. The electronic household appliance according to claim 1,wherein said selected internal control system is an operating apparatushaving an input device and/or a display device for a user of thehousehold appliance.
 7. The electronic household appliance according toclaim 6, wherein said controller of said selected internal controlsystem is configured to control said input device and/or said displaydevice for exchanging information relating to data communication viasaid communication device.